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objet tells the story of a young girl
named midge I know struggled to save a
pet super pig from a powerful
corporation that wants to raise and
slaughter this new breed of animals for
mass consumption although it was most
likely accidental the story of jazz many
parallels with the true story of Emily
the cow which I think provides some
great insights into the movie and its
controversial subject of animal
consumption did you hear the one about
the cow that escaped from the
slaughterhouse and then was rescued by a
family of vegetarians it's a true story
and it happened right here in
Massachusetts in 1995 Emily the cow
escaped from a Massachusetts
slaughterhouse by charging out of line
and leaping her over 1,500 pounds
weighing body over the fence she was at
large for 40 days and 40 nights during
which she was aided by locals who fed
her and helped her evade the authorities
the story became front-page news and
after she was recaptured Emily was sold
for just $1 to a nearby foundation where
she lived out her days and peace until
her death in 2003 so this is Emily's
Roadhouse and the area here this corner
was where Emily would entertain her
visitors we had people coming far and
wide to to hang out with Emily it was
set up as a living room where Emily
could hang out with people that wanted
to get a load of her journey is she
enabled people to realize in looking in
her eyes that there is a conscious
intelligent brilliantly a live creature
that desires to live what the stories of
Emily and akhiya have in common is that
they both were filled up concerned
compassion and mercy for one particular
animal but also made us painfully aware
of the millions of animals that aren't
so lucky and continue to suffer at our
hands so what does this tell us aside
from the more general issue with our
capacity for empathy I want to focus on
an issue that is more directly related
to animals and animal consumption and
that is the issue of carnism
carnism was coined in 2011 by melanie
joy and her book rival of ducks eat pigs
and wear cows to challenge the normality
of raising and killing a select number
of animal species for consumption she
points out that although we may think
we're consuming animals out of necessity
we're actually doing it out of ideology
an ideology called carnism we tend to
assume that only vegans and vegetarians
follow a belief system but when eating
animals is not a necessity which is the
case in much of the world today then it
is a choice and choices always stem from
beliefs joy emphasizes that our belief
that it is ok to consume certain animals
as little to do with the actual animals
themselves and it's mostly based on our
perceptions formed by cultural
influences baek's for example are just
as intelligent sensitive and sentient as
dogs if not more so and yet one is
treated as family while the other is
treated as property
okay two shows a remarkable level of
intelligence and capacity for emotion
and yet a primary concern appears to be
any details lucky good garden ism is an
invisible ideology meaning that if
you're a carnist and consume animal
products our society won't remind you
that you're making an ideological
decision this is because garden ism is
legalized in our formal institutions and
normalized in our culture through for
example advertisements historical
traditions and movies and television
this isn't the case for veganism which
can be seen as the ideological opposite
of carnism in contrast veganism is
highly visible exactly because of this
out of the ordinary and as we can see an
oak chair this creates a somewhat absurd
situation in which non-violent
compassionate activists who are trying
to defy carnism are practically labeled
as terrorists and treated as such
obviously there are major economic
interests involved as well as animal
consumption has turned into a
multi-billion dollar industry that
benefits from keeping its consumers as
ignorant and passive as possible mostly
by reassuring them in the morality
framing animal consumption as an issue
of personal freedom instead of an issue
of justice and treating any
controversies as incidental
abnormalities that in no way reflect the
system as a whole this allows us to keep
consuming animals and maintain a
positive self-image while doing so and
yet I feel that understanding and
confronting carnism is especially
relevant today as its practices are
increasingly cruel and at times flat-out
horrifying not out of evil intent
but more so because at the end of the
day this industry is first and foremost
concerned about one thing making a
profit
we see some of these practices in oak
jazz the animal suffers physically and
maybe even worse suffers mentally in
reality many animals quite literally go
insane as a result of the trauma that is
inflicted on them I've just director
bong Joe Howe researched these practices
and visited actual slaughterhouses for
the film the results of which motivated
him to temporarily go vegan
unfortunately his veganism didn't stick
according to him because it was simply
too difficult to keep up in Korea where
in his words every street on every
corner is burning me it is a clear
example of the power of strongly
embedded ideologies like carnism that
make it so dangerously easy for us to
abandon morality for convenience a power
that is taken advantage of by big
corporations like Morano that feud our
consumers as mindless beings if it's
cheap we'll eat it I guarantee you early
trails will be strong what makes
understanding carnism important to me is
that it creates a discussion where we
once thought there was none it reveals
how consuming animals just as much as
eating plant-based it's most of all an
ideological matter especially in today's
society where we have so much potential
and possibilities to innovate in ways
that do not lead to absurdities and
atrocities it opens up a way to begin
creating a happy ending not just for our
chan Emily but also for the countless
other animals that remain nameless so
yes there is hope and where is the hope
is it out there with the politicians
it's in our hands it's in your hands and
my hands and those of our children it's
really up to us we are the ones who can
make a difference if we lead live where
we consciously the lightest possible
ecological footprints if we buy the
things that are ethical for us to buy
and don't buy the things that are not we
can change the world overnight
you
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